Check Answer

Pestered: Solution

By Leland Aldridge and Oliver Mulley

Answer:MASTER AT ARMS

The body of the puzzle is written as a “pesterlog” from the
multimedia webcomic Homestuck.
Hopefully, if you were not aware of this comic, the Warhammer of
Zillyhoo reference should lead you to it swiftly.

In Homestuck, each of the main characters has a particular
way of typing. Eridan
Ampora, for instance, always doubles ws and vs. From these
typing quirks, the character delivering each line in the puzzle
can be determined.

Each character has a conjoined two-word chat handle, such as
Eridan’s being caligulasAquarium. Each line of chat
is prefaced by the initials of the chat handle, so Eridan’s lines
would all start CA:. In the puzzle, these
designations are blacked out. After determining which character
delivers each line, the handle initials can be filled in.

A significant aspect of Homestuck is genetic codes. Each of the
main character’s handles have initials from the nucleotide bases
ATCG. If the chat handle initials from the whole puzzle are put in
sequence, the following genetic sequence is recovered:

If this is split into triplets and decoded to an amino acid
sequence, using the standard
single-letter
abbreviations for amino acids, a message is recovered:
PAGE ADDRESSES WHERE DEAD IS IN A PANEL.

Characters die quite often in Homestuck (the same character
multiple times, in some cases), but in a few select instances
those deaths are accompanied by panel art with the word “DEAD” in
them. All ten of the characters featured in the puzzle’s dialog
have had this happen in at least one instance. Homestuck is
arranged on the web so that each page has a (usually) four-digit
page address. The relevant DEAD panels are found at:

The chat lines given in the puzzle are all exactly 100 characters
long, including spaces and punctuation. These page addresses can
be used as a set of two indices to extract two characters from
each line, according to the character who delivered them. In the
case of Jade, using either of the addresses extracts the same
characters. After extracting all the characters, one finds twelve
space-separated strings: seag0at Lion S)(-ELLFIS)( HOLST31NS
bowwhunter M41D3N Twins sCALES PITCHER 4R4CHN1D BiGhOrN FISH

Each of these strings describes one of the zodiac signs, written
in the style of one of the Homestuck trolls. Since each troll
additionally is associated with a specific zodiac sign, it’s
possible to pair the troll with the appropriate zodiac sign with
the troll whose typing style is represented. This yields a single
letter in the same position in both names: